4: Into Unknown

Underground rock'n'roll kingpin Timmy Vulgar has recorded some of his most boisterous work over the past two years, releasing scummy, blown-out rock as Timmy's Organism, and sci-fi psych as Human Eye-- whose wild fourth album backs away from the muscle of 2011's They Came From the Sky.

Featured Tracks:

Over the last two years, Timmy Vulgar has recorded some of his most boisterously awesome work to date. Last year, he put out the Timmy's Organism album Raw Sewage Roq-- a solid collection of songs with scumbag lyrics slurred over blown-out hard rock guitars. But while the most recent Timmy's album is marked by its devotion to Johnny Thunders and the Freeze, his other band Human Eye is more defined by their sci-fi psychedelia. Their stage show usually involves Timmy throwing on a big monster mask, and their thematic territory tends to sound like something from the yellowed pages of a sci-fi paperback. Their 2011 album *They Came From the Sky *paired punk rock muscle with buzzing sci-fi sonics. Into Unknown, the band's fourth studio album, takes a risk of sorts by backing away from the "muscle" part of the equation.

Instead, Timmy and the gang aim for a sound that's more paced than raucous. The percussion of "Immortal Soldier" moves quickly, but it simmers beneath the surface. Timmy is yowling, but the vocals are muffled. The guitar solo sounds smothered. With a slightly different arrangement and slightly faster tempos, it could be a soaring rock'n'roll anthem. Instead, the more muted tone folds into the album's loose narrative. And sometimes, the quieter elements are used to complement Timmy's noisier inclinations. "Surface of Pluto" starts out spare-- a quiet piano and acoustic guitar, some desolate 2001: A Space Odyssey synths. Then, right as things get a bit sleepy, boom: big screeching guitar solo. At the end of the LP sits the title track: a six-minute, all-instrumental odyssey. There's a krautrock bassline, a simple melody being plunked out on a xylophone, and a warm guitar solo that switches from a warm Eastern tone to a scuzzy Detroit attack. With an occasional tinge of UFO feedback, it evokes exactly what it's meant to: a journey into the unknown.

Human Eye go in for more straightforward rock'n'roll, too, but aside from the barking track "Juicy Jaw", those are some of the album's weakest moments. "Alligator Dance" has the barroom piano, guitar sound, and howling vocals that sounded so great on Raw Sewage Roq. Here, however, they're implemented on a song with worse lyrics, an unnecessarily lethargic tempo, and a completely lazy guitar solo. "Buzzin' Flies" somehow feels too repetitive after just two-and-a-half minutes. Then there are the other questionable sonic decisions; throughout the record, there's a keyboard sound that's most easily described as "circus organ." Maybe that's what they're going for-- Timmy's stage presence and deranged howls, after all, aren't too dissimilar from Tim Curry in It.

The easy highlight is "Outlaw Lone Wolf", a story with the basic revenge-fueled beats of a Tarantino movie. It's the kind of song that provides every single piece of context in the most transparently stated lyrics possible, like Lefty Frizzell's "Saginaw, Michigan" or Tim Heidecker's "Titanic". With some acid rock guitars, Timmy embarks on the tale of the son of a blacksmith, who was abandoned as an orphan, rescued by Apaches, and became a great warrior. One day, while he was out hunting, somebody burned the entire village. As the warrior's charred wife dies in his arms, she manages these last words: "It was the blacksmith/ Avenge our deaths." (Again, nothing vague about this story at all.) And then there's an instrumental breakdown that sounds like Human Eye doing Ennio Morricone. It's a ridiculous, campy, awesome six minutes.

The pacing and sequencing of Into Unknown is stellar, but it's hard to get an accurate read of the album's overall feel. While the title track sounds contemplative, "Alligator Dance" is anything but. It's an album that seems to have a sense of humor, but aside from "Outlaw Lone Wolf", it's never quite funny. Raw Sewage Roq and They Came From the Sky each had a clear-cut aesthetic, and this album heads in too many directions to have one decisive focus. But hey, it's called Into Unknown-- an appropriate title for an album that has songs about both Pluto and patricide.